


The Things We Say

by plaisirparkway



Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: F/M, Idiots in Love, Light Angst, Mutual Pining, Pining, if you squint bc they're stupid, just not ready to say it, the lightest bc they really are in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:15:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26921974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plaisirparkway/pseuds/plaisirparkway
Summary: An interlude between the emotionally repressed Commanding Agent and the equally stoic detective:Her voice is beautiful. Especially as she goes on, uninterrupted. Second, (and this thought rushed up on him, this is one he would have stopped if it wasn’t a freight train, bearing down on him from out of the ether), it is a voice made for reading to him.
Relationships: Detective/Adam du Mortain, Female Detective/Adam du Mortain
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20





	The Things We Say

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying to move some stuff over from tumblr to live here as well. if you're looking for witcher stuff from me, it's coming. if you're a new reader for wayhaven, thanks for reading! more to come! (join me in looking foolish over one idiotic commanding agent.)
> 
> title and poem quote from [this](https://readalittlepoetry.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/we-are-hard-by-margaret-atwood/)!

It’s agony.

The way she leaves little touches of herself wherever she goes. 

Her perfume, seconds after she’s left a room. A lipstick stain on a bygone paper coffee mug. He is certain he’s never seen her finish a cup in its entirety. They go lukewarm first.

Once, Adam found a hair tie, and it still had three strands of her hair coiled around it. Those dense lush curls she pulls back into thick black clouds atop her head. It smelled so strongly of her shampoo, something inside him gave way and he snapped it in two pieces and threw it in the trash. 

(Agony is not hyperbole, it is fact.) 

The worst thing now, is books. 

“They soothe me,” she’d said to Farah (not him) in the wake of good-natured teasing, at the insinuation that she’d been picking up habits from Nate. 

She leaves them, he knows, by accident, but it sometimes feels as though he must conjure them just by–

By thinking of her. 

Her appetite is broad. Sci-fi and romance and philosophy and biographies. 

And poetry. That’s what she scatters lately, abandoning in the seat of her car and in their common room and even now at her desk, a stack three or four books high, occupying one corner. 

He doesn’t mean to sneak up on her, but she still jumps a little when he steps into her doorway. Her eyes, dark and unknowable, flip up to meet him. Her mouth (plump and pinky-brown) doesn’t change. She takes a long moment to hunt for a bookmark. She uses everything but. Scraps of paper. Old receipts. Her finger, if she thinks the interruption will be brief. Coming up empty, she simply leaves it open on the desktop. Pages down, spine up. 

“How was your patrol?” she asks. She always asks. 

“Quiet.” 

“Good,” The silence stretches long. “You can come in, Agent.” 

He doesn’t think she’s teasing him. It’s a rarity, anyway, usually buoyed by one of his teammates. If she was, she’d probably tack on “Commanding,” just to get the dig in. 

Adam steps into the office, and it’s always _like this_. It’s always things he can’t help wanting to know: she’s switched to tea, so she doesn’t plan on being here much longer. These particular books come from the local library, and he can picture her there, moving through the stacks. Smoothing her fingertips along the shelves. The socks beneath her black boots are wool so she must’ve been cold waking up (alone?) in that little apartment of hers. 

It’s always _like this_. How she shifts and adjusts in her seat, pulling one leg up and letting the other toe rest on the linoleum. The rush of blood underneath her dark brown skin as they lock eyes. They way her pupils dilate under his attention. The unwelcome feeling in his stomach he always has to loosen. Before it makes him do something stupid. 

Something like how his fingers are already twitching, because just _what_ is he going to do with his hand?

He lets it land on the stack of books as he takes the seat opposite her. 

“What are you reading?”

Her eyebrows lift so fractionally he might have missed it if he weren’t, well, himself.

“It’s a poetry collection,” she replies, picking the book up slowly. “I–this particular poem is Atwood.” 

He nods. He doesn’t know what else to do. This is as close as they’ve come to polite conversation about something other than work in more than a week. The more he wants to talk to her about something other than work, the more he pretends she doesn’t exist. 

Unprompted, she launches into a reading and he has two painful thoughts. Her voice is _beautiful_. Especially as she goes on, uninterrupted. Second, (and this thought rushed up on him, this is one he would have stopped if it wasn’t a freight train, bearing down on him from out of the ether), it is a voice made for reading to _him_. 

That’s where he manages to stop that thought, though. Any further would be–

He’s stopping that thought. 

Her voice stutters and starts through the next stanza, tripping in a way he can’t identify. “If,” she says and starts again, “if I love you, is–is that a fact or a weapon?”

She pauses, and it’s like all the air in the room has gone out. 

“Is that the end?” he asks, with a voice like crushed glass. 

“No. There’s more.” 

But she doesn’t say anything more.

Then, quietly. “Adam.” 

They meet eyes again. “Serena.” 

Her lips part and he knows he can’t bear what she’s going to say ( _whatever_ she’s going to say) when her cell phone rings. It’s loud, it’s the worst sound he’s ever heard. It’s his saving grace. 

He gets to his feet too fast; knees quaking as he leaves the station. The cold rush of air outside is just the wake up call he needs, just exactly what it will take for him to forget this encounter. Forget the terrifying bliss he felt for a split second in time. 

He turns the words over in his mind as he squares his shoulders and heads back in the direction he came. 

_A fact or a weapon._

He gives himself just one second to think about the bookmarks he’s collected. Hoarded. A rainbow of colors, some with tassels, one has beads. There is one that is especially exquisite, ivy green with gilded gold edges. She would like that one, if she ever saw it. Give that little sigh like she does over her coffee, when it’s still hot on her tongue.

But they’re in a drawer, in his bedroom, where they’ll stay.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! you can find me freaking out over wayhaven @adamsdimples on tumblr.


End file.
